RESEARCH & PUBLICATION

An Evaluation to Improve Literacy of School Age Children Project: Findings from the Baseline

Bangladesh has achieved remarkable success in establishing a uniform mass orienteduniversal system of education in the primary sector. However, in terms of the quality ofeducation, students’ learning achievement and reduction in dropout did not attain similarbreakthrough. For providing quality education, BRAC, World Food Programme andRangpur Dinajpur Rural Services initiated a project in Fulchari and Sundarganj upazilas.Various capacity development training were considered as key components of thisproject which were provided by BRAC. WFP provided funding support and RDRSdirectly implemented project activities in the schools. Both WFP and BRAC aremonitoring their project activities and are working for their improvement. A total of 375schools in Fulchari and Sundarganj upazilas will get benefit from this. 110 schools havebeen included in the first phase. For evaluating project activities a series of studies hasbeen planned. This baseline study explored the initial situation of schools underintervention in terms of enrolment, attendance, completion and literacy skills of students.Review of training process, measures changes that comprehend stakeholders(teachers and RDRS staff) and understanding the challenges in implementing newknowledge are also inbuilt agenda of this study. Both qualitative and quantitativetechniques were applied for data collection. A total of 30 schools were randomlyselected where school survey, assessment on students’ learning ability and theirsocioeconomic background, teacher’s perceptions and stakeholder’s views on projectactivities were collected. Findings revealed that student’s enrolment and attendance arequite satisfactory, however, they are not much competent in reading and writing.Specially, there is a significant crisis in writing which proves that they need muchattention on it. Generally, teachers and RDRS staff seemed to be satisfied with thequality of training, while some of them thought that teachers’ orientation and schoolmanagement training should be more elaborate. This study suggests frequentclassroom observations and initiate some extra efforts for the go-slow-learners. Regularcommunication with community, teachers, stakeholders and govt. officials is required.